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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Angels of Mons 



The Angels of Mons 
THE BOWMEN 

AND OTHER 

LEGENDS OF THE WAR 

BY 

ARTHUR MACHEN 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 



G. P. PUTNAM*S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

^be •Rnfcfterbocfter press 

1915 






Copyright, 1915 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube "Rnfcfterbocber press, IRew l^orh 

OCT -7 1915 

©CI.A410905 



u 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 

The Bowmen 

The Soldiers' Rest 

The Monstrance 

The Dazzling Light 

The Bowmen and Other Noble Ghosts 

By " The Londoner." 



PAGE 
I 

44 
56 

65 



Postscript 



72 



THE BOWMEN 



INTRODUCTION 

J HA VE been asked to write an introduc- 
tion to the story of ''The Bowmen,'' 
on its publication in book form together 
with three other tales of similar fashion. 
And I hesitate. This affair of " The Bow- 
men'' has been such an odd one from first 
to last, so many queer complications have 
entered into it, there have been so many and 
so divers currents and cross-currents of 
rumour and speculation concerning it, that 
I honestly do not know where to begin. I 
propose, then, to solve the difficulty by apolo- 
gizing for beginning at all. 

For, usually and fitly, the presence of 



2 The Angels of Mons 

an introduction is held to imply that there 
is something of consequence and importance 
to he introduced. If, for examphy a man 
has made an anthology of great poetry, he 
may well write an introduction justifying 
his principle of selection, poijiting out here 
and there, as the spirit moves him, high 
beauties and supreme excellencies, discours- 
ing of the magnates and lords and princes 
of literature, whom he is merely serving as 
groom of the chamber. Introductions, that 
is, belong to the masterpieces and classics 
of the world, to the great and ancient and 
accepted things; and I am here introducing 
a short, small story of my own which ap- 
peared in The Evening News about ten 
months ago. 

I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the 
enormity of the position hi all its grossness. 
And my excuse for these pages must be this: 
that though the story itself is nothing, it has 
yet had such odd and unforeseen conse- 



Introduction 3 

quences and adventures that the tale of them 
may possess some interest. And then, 
again, there are certain psychological morals 
to he drawn from the whole matter of the tale 
and its sequel of rumours and discussions 
that are not, I think, devoid of consequence; 
and so to begin at the beginning. 

This was in last August; to be more pre- 
cise, on the last Sunday of last August. 
There were terrible things to be read on that 
hot Sunday mor?iing between meat and 
mass. It was in The Weekly Dispatch 
that I saw the awful account of the retreat 
from Mons. I no longer recollect the details; 
hut I have not forgotten the impression that 
was then made on my mind. I seemed to 
see a furnace of torment and death and 
agony and terror seven times heated, and in 
the midst of the burning was the British 
Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed 
by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like 



The Aneels of Mons 



'e^ 



ashes and yet triumphant y martyred and for 
ever glorious. So I saw our men with a 
shining about them^ so I took these thoughts 
with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, 
was making up a story in my head while 
the deacon was singing the Gospel. 

This was not the tale of '' The Bowmen. *' 
It was the first sketch, as it were, of '' The 
Soldiers' Rest, " which is reprinted in this 
volume. I only wish I had been able to 
write it as I conceived it. The tale as it 
stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft 
than *' The Bowmen, " but the tale that came 
to me as the blue incense floated above the 
Gospel Book on the desk between the tapers: 
that indeed was a noble story — like all the 
stories that never get written. I conceived 
the dead men coming up through the flames 
and in the flames, and being welcomed in the 
Eternal Tavern with songs and flowing cups 
and everlasting mirth. But every man is 
the child of his age, however much he may 



Introduction 5 

hate it; and cnir popular religion has long 
determined that jollity is wicked. As far 
as I caji make out modern Protestantism 
believes that Heaven is something like Even- 
song in an English cathedral, the service by 
Stainer and the Dean preaching. For 
those opposed to dogma of any kind — even 
the mildest — I suppose it is held that a 
Course of Ethical Lectures will he arrariged. 
Well, I have long maintained that on the 
whole the average church, considered as a 
house of preaching, is a much more poison- 
ous place than the average tavern; still, as 
I say, one's age masters one, and clouds and 
bewilders the intelligence, and the real story 
of "The Soldiers' Rest,'' with its ''son us 
epulantium in ceterno convivio," was ruined 
at the moment of its birth, and it was some 
time later that the actual story, as here 
printed, got written. Ajid in the meantime 
the plot of " The Bowmen " occurred to me. 
Now it has been murmured and hinted ayid 



6 The Angels of Mons 

suggested and whispered in all sorts of 
quarters that before I wrote the tale I had 
heard something. The most decorative of 
these legends is also the most precise: '*/ 
know for a fact that the whole thing was given 
him in typescript by a lady-in-waiting.'' 
This was not the case; and all vaguer reports 
to the effect that I had heard some rumours 
or hints of rumours are equally void of 
any trace of truth. 

Again I apologize for entering so pom- 
pously into the minutice of my bit of a story, 
as if it were the lost poems of Sappho; but 
it appears that the subject interests the pub- 
lic, and I comply with my instructions. I 
take it, then, that the origins of " The Bow- 
men'' were composite. First of all, all- 
ages and nations have cherished the thoughi. 
that spiritual hosts may come to the help of 
earthly arms, that gods and heroes and saints 
have descended from their high immortal 
places to fight for their worshippers and 



Introduction 7 

clients. Then Kipling^ s story of the ghostly 
Indian regiment got into my head and got 
mixed with the medicevalism that is always 
there; and so '' The Bowme?i'' was written. 
I was heartily disappointed with it, I 
remember, and thought it — as I still think it 
— an indifferent piece of work. However, 
I have tried to write for these thirty -five long 
years, and if I have not become practised 
in letters, I am at least a past master in the 
Lodge of Disappointment. Such as it was, 
*' The Bowmen'' appeared in The Evening 
News of September 2gth, 1914. 

Now the journalist does not, as a rule, 
dwell much on the prospect of fame; and if 
he be an evening journalist, his anticipa- 
tions of immortality are bounded by twelve 
o'clock at night at the latest; and it may well 
be that those insects which begin to live in 
the morning and are dead by sunset deem 
themselves immortal. Having written my 
story, having groaned and growled over it 



8 The Angels of Mons 

and printed it, I certainly never thought to 
hear another word oj it. My colleague 
*' The Londoner'' praised it warmly to my 
face, as his kindly fashion is; entering, 
very properly, a technical caveat as to the 
language of the battle-cries of the bowmen, 
" Why should English archers use French 
terms?'' he said. I replied that the only 
reason was this — that a ^^ Monseigneur" 
here and there struck me as picturesqiie; 
and I reminded him that, as a matter of 
cold historical fact, most of the archers of 
Agincourt were mercenaries from Gwent, 
my native country, who would appeal to 
Mihangel and to saints not knoivn to the 
Saxons — Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr 
Vendigeid. And I thought that that was 
the first and last discussion of ^^The Bow- 
men. " But in a few days from its publica- 
tion the editor of The Occult Review 
wrote to me. He wanted to know whether 
the story had any foundation in fact. I 



Introduction 9 

told him that it had no foundation in fact 
of any kind or sort; I forget whether I 
added that it had no foundation in rumour, 
hut I should think not, since to the best of my 
belief there were no rumours of heavenly 
interposition in existence at that time. 
Certainly I had heard of none. Soon after- 
wards the editor of Light wrote asking a 
like question, and I made him a like reply. 
It seemed to me that I had stifled any 
''Bowmen''' mythos in the hour of its birth. 
A month or two later, I received several 
requests from editors of parish magazines 
to reprint the story. I— or, rather, my 
editor — readily gave permission; and then, 
after another 7nonth or two, the conductor 
of one of these magazines wrote to me, 
saying that the February issue containing 
the story had been sold out, while there was 
still a great demand for it. Would I allow 
them to reprint '' The Bowmen'' as a pam- 
phlet, and would I write a short preface 



10 The Angels of Mons 

giving the exact authorities for the story? 
I replied that they might reprint in pamphlet 
form with all my heart, hut that I could not 
give my authorities, since I had none, the 
tale being pure invention. The priest 
wrote again, suggesting — to my amazement 
— that I must be mistaken, that the main 
^^ facts'^ of ^^The Bowmen^' must be tr , 
that my share in the matter must surely he ^ 
been confined to the elaboration and decora- 
tion of a veridical history. It seemed that 
my light fiction had been accepted by the 
congregation of this particular church as 
the solidest of facts; and it was then that it 
began to dawn on me that if I had failed in 
the art of letters, I had succeeded, unwit- 
tingly, in the art of deceit. This happened, 
I should think, some time in April, and the 
snowball of rumour that was then set rolling 
has been rolling ever since, growing bigger 
and bigger, till it is now swollen to a mon- 
strous size. 



Introduction ii 

It was at about this period that variants 
of my tale began to be told as authentic 
histories. At first, these tales betrayed 
their relation to their original. In several 
of them the vegetarian restaurant appeared, 
and St. George was the chief character. In 
one case an officer — name and address miss- 
ing — said that there was a portrait of St. 
George in a certain London restaurant, and 
that a figure, just like the portrait, appeared 
to him on the battlefield, and was invoked 
by him, with the happiest results. Another 
variant — this, I think, never got into print — 
told how dead Prussians had been found on 
the battlefield with arrow wounds in their 
bodies. This notion amused me, as I had 
imagined a scene, when I was thinking out 
the story, in which a German general was 
to appear before the Kaiser to explain his 
failure to annihilate the English, 

''All-Highest,'' the general was to say, 
*^it is true, it is impossible to deny it. The 



12 The Angels of Mons 

men were killed by arrows; the shafts were 
found in their bodies by the burying 
parties y 

I rejected the idea as over-precipitous 
even for a mere fantasy. I was therefore 
entertained when I found that what I had 
refused as too fantastical for fantasy was 
accepted in certain occult circles as hard 
fact. 

Other versions of the story appeared hi 
which a cloud interposed between the attack- 
ing Germans and the defending British. In 
some examples the cloud served to conceal 
our men from the advancing enemy; in 
others, it disclosed shining shapes which 
frightened the horses of the pursuing Ger- 
man cavalry. St. George, it will be noted, 
has disappeared — he persisted some time 
longer in certain Roman Catholic variants — 
and there are no more bowmen, no more 
arrows. But so far angels are not men- 
tioned; yet they are ready to appear, and I 



Introduction 13 

thi7ik that I have detected the machine which 
brought them into the story. 

In " The Bowmen'' my imagined soldier 
saw *'a long line of shapes, with a shining 
about them.'' And Mr. A. P. Sinnett, 
writing in the May issue of The Occult 
Review, reporting what he had heard, states 
that ^^ those who coidd see said they saw ^ a 
row of shining beings' between the two 
armies. " Now I conjecture that the word 
^^ shining" is the link between my tale a7id 
the derivative from it. In the popular view 
shining and benevolent supernatural beings 
are angels and nothing else, and must be 
angels, and so, I believe, the Bowmen of my 
story have become 'Uhe Angels of Alons." 
In this shape they have been received with 
respect and credence everywhere, or almost 
everywhere. 

And here, I conjecture, zve have the key 
to the large poptdarity of the delusion — as 
I think it. We have long ceased in England 



14 The Angels of Mons 

to take much interest in saints j and in the 
recent revival oj the cultus of St. George, the 
saint is little more than a patriotic figure- 
head. And the appeal to the saints to sue- 
cour us is certainly not a common English 
practice; it is held Popish hy most of our 
countrymen. But angels, with certain re- 
servations, have retained their popularity, 
and so, when it was settled that the English 
army in its dire peril was delivered hy 
angelic aid, the way was clear for general 
belief, and for the enthusiasms of the religion 
of the man in the street. A}td so soon as 
the legend got the title ''The Angels of 
Mons'' it became impossible to avoid it. 
It permeated the Press: it would not be 
neglected; it appeared in the most unlikely 
quarters — in Truth and Town Topics, 
The New Church Weekly {Sweden- 
borgian) and John Bull. The editor of 
The Church Times has exercised a wise 
reserve: he awaits that evidence which so 



Introduction 15 

far is lacking; hut in one issue of the paper 
I noted that the story furnished a text for a 
sermon, the subject of a letter, and the matter 
for an article. People send me cuttings 
from proviiicial papers containing hot con- 
troversy as to the exact nature of the ap- 
pearances; the ''Office Window'' of The 
Daily Chronicle suggests scientific ex- 
planations of the hallucination; the Pall 
Mall in a note about St. James says he is 
of the brotherhood of the Bowmen of Mons — 
this reversion to the bowmen from the angels 
beijig possibly due to the strong statements 
that I have made on the matter. The 
pulpits both of the Church and of Noncon- 
formity have been busy: Bishop Welldon^ 
Dean Hensley Henson (a disbeliever) , 
Bishop Taylor Smith {the Chaplain-Gen- 
eral), and many other clergy have occupied 
themselves with the matter. Dr. Horton 
preached about the ''angels'' at Manchester; 
Sir Joseph Compton Rickett {President of 



t6 The Angels of Mons 

the National Federation of Free Church 
Councils) stated that the soldiers at the front 
had seen visions and dreamed dreams, and 
had given testimony of powers and princi- 
palities fighting for them or against them. 
Letters come from all the ends of the earth 
to the editor of The Evening News with 
theories, beliefs, explanations, suggestions. 
It is all somewhat woftderful; one can say 
that the whole affair is a psychological 
phenomenon of considerable ifiterest, fairly 
comparable with the great Russian delusion 
of last August and September. 



Now it is possible that some persons, 
judging by the tone of these remarks of mine, 
may gather the impression that I am a 
profound disbeliever in the possibility of 
any intervention of the superphysical order 
in the affairs of the physical order. They 
will be mistaken if they make this inference; 



Introduction 17 

they will he mistaken if they suppose that I 
thifik miracles i?i Judcea credible but mir- 
acles in France or Flanders incredible. I 
hold no such absurdities. But I confess, 
very frankly, that I credit none of the 
^'Angels of Mons'' legends, partly because 
I see, or think I see, their derivation from 
my own idle fiction, btit chiefly because I 
have, so far, not received one jot or tittle of 
evidence that should dispose me to belief. 
It is idle, indeed, and foolish enough for a 
man to say: '*/ am sure that story is a lie, 
because the supernatural element enters into 
it'' ; here, indeed, we have the maggot writh- 
ing in the midst of corrupted offal denying 
the existence of the sun. But if this fellow 
be a fool — as he is — equally foolish is he 
who says: *' If the tale has anything of the 
supernatural it is true, and the less evidence 
the better''; and I am afraid this tends to be 
the attitude of many who call themselves 
occultists, I hope that I shall never get to 



1 8 The Angels of Mons 

that frame oj mind. So I say, not that 
supernormal interventions are impossible, 
not that they have not happened during this 
war — / know nothing as to that point, one 
way or the other — hut that there is not one 
atom of evidence {so far) to support the 
current stories of the angels of Mons. For, 
he it remarked, these stories are specific 
stories. They rest on the second, third, 
fourth, fifth hand stories told hy ^^ a soldier, " 
by ''aji ofiicer,'' hy ''a Catholic correspond- 
ent,'' hy '*a nurse,'' hy any number of 
anonymous people. Indeed, names have 
been mentioned. A lady's name has been 
drawn, most unwarrantably as it appears 
to me, into the discussion, and I have no 
doubt that this lady has been subject to a 
good deal of pestering and annoyance. She 
has written to the editor of The Evening 
News denying all knowledge of the sup- 
posed miracle. The Psychical Research 
Society's expert confesses that no real evi- 



Introduction 19 

dence has been proffered to her Society on 
the matter. And then, to my amazement y 
she accepts as fact the proposition that some 
men on the battlefield have been '''halluci- 
nated,'' and proceeds to give the theory of 
sensory hallucination. She forgets that, 
by her own showing, there is no reason to 
suppose that anybody has been hallucinated 
at all. Someone {imknown) has met a 
nurse {unnamed) who has talked to a soldier 
(anonymous) who has seen angels. But 
THAT is not evidence; and not even Sam 
Weller at his gayest woidd have dared to 
offer it as such in the Court of Common 
Pleas. So far, then, nothing remotely 
approaching proof has been offered as to 
any supernatural intervention during the Re- 
treat from Mons. Proof may come; if so, it 
will be interesting and more than interesting. 

But, taking the affair as it stands at 
present, how is it that a nation plunged in 



20 The Angels of Mons 

materialism of the grossest kind has accepted 
idle rumours and gossip of the supernatural 
as certain truth? The answer is contained 
in the question: it is precisely because our 
whole atmosphere is materialist that we are 
ready to credit anything — save the truth. 
Separate a man from good drink ^ he will 
swallow methylated spirit with joy. Man 
is created to he inebriated; to be ^^ nobly 
wild, not mad. " Suffer the Cocoa Prophets 
and their company to seduce him in body 
and spirit, and he will get himself stuff that 
will make him ignobly wild and mad indeed. 
It took hard, practical men of affairs, busi- 
ness men, advanced thinkers, FreethinkerSj 
to believe in Madame Blavatsky and Ma- 
hatmas and the famous message from the 
Golden Shore: ''Judge's plan is right; 
follow him and stick. " 

And the main responsibility for this dis- 
mal state of affairs undoubtedly lies on the 
shoulders of the majority of the clergy of 



Introduction 21 

the Church of England. Christianity, as 
Mr. W. L. Courtney has so admirably 
pointed out, is a great Mystery Religion; 
it is THE Mystery Religion. Its priests 
are called to an awful and tremendous 
hierurgy; its pontiffs are to he the path- 
finders, the bridge-makers between the world 
of sense a?id the world of spirit. And, in 
fact, they pass their time in preaching, not 
the eternal mysteries, but a twopenny 
morality, in changing the Wine of Angels 
and the Bread of Heaven into gingerbeer 
and mixed biscuits: a sorry transubstan- 
tiation, a sad alchemy, as it seems to me. 



I 



THE BOWMEN 

T was during the Retreat of the Eighty 
Thousand, and the authority of the 
Censorship is sufficient excuse for not 
being more expHcit. But it was on the 
most awful day of that awful time, on the 
day when ruin and disaster came so near 
that their shadow fell over London far 
away; and, without any certain news, the 
hearts of men failed within them and grew 
faint; as if the agony of the army in the 
battlefield had entered into their souls. 

On this dreadful day, then, when three 
hundred thousand men in arms with all 
their artillery swelled like a flood against 
the little English company, there was 
one point above all other points in our 
battle line that was for a time in awful 

23 



24 The Angels of Mons 

danger, not merely of defeat, but of utter 
annihilation. With the permission of the 
Censorship and of the military expert, this 
corner may, perhaps, be described as a 
salient, and if this angle were crushed and 
broken, then the English force as a whole 
would be shattered, the Allied left would 
be turned, and Sedan would inevitably 
follow. 

All the morning the German guns had 
thundered and shrieked against this cor- 
ner, and against the thousand or so of men 
who held it. The men joked at the shells, 
and found funny names for them, and had 
bets about them, and greeted them with 
scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells 
came on and burst, and tore good English- 
men limb from limb, and tore brother 
from brother, and as the heat of the day 
increased so did the fur}^ of that terrific 
cannonade. There was no help, it seemed. 
The English artillery was good, but there 



The Bowmen 25 

was not nearly enough of it ; it was being 
steadily battered into scrap iron. 

There conies a moment in a storm at 
sea when people say to one another, ''It 
is at its worst; it can blow no harder," 
and then there is a blast ten times more 
fierce than any before it. So it was in 
these British trenches. 

There were no stouter hearts in the 
whole world than the hearts of these men ; 
but even they were appalled as this seven- 
times-heated hell of the German cannon- 
ade fell upon them and overwhelmed them 
and destroyed them. And at this very 
moment they saw from their trenches that 
a tremendous host was moving against 
their lines. Five hundred of the thousand 
remained, and as far as they could see the 
German infantry was pressing on against 
them, column upon column, a grey world 
of men, ten thousand of them, as it 
appeared afterwards. 



26 The Aneels of Mons 



^5 



There was no hope at all. They shook 
hands, some of them. One man impro- 
vised a new version of the battle-song, 
*' Good-bye, good-bye to Tipperary, " end- 
ing with ''And we shan't get there." 
And they all went on firing steadily. The 
officers pointed out that such an oppor- 
tunity for high-class fancy shooting might 
never occur again; the Germans dropped 
line after line; the Tipperary humourist 
asked, ''What price Sidney Street?" 
And the few machine c^uns did their best. 
But everybody knew it was of no use. 
The dead grey bodies lay in companies 
and battalions, as others came on and 
on and on, and they swarmed and stirred 
and advanced from beyond and beyond. 

"World without end. Amen," said 
one of the British soldiers with some ir- 
relevance as he took aim and fired. And 
then he remembered — he says he cannot 
think why or wherefore — a queer vege- 



The Bowmen 27 

tarian restaurant in London where he 
had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes 
of cutlets made of lentils and nuts that 
pretended to be steak. On all the plates 
in this restaurant there was printed a 
figure of St. George in blue, with the 
motto, Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius — 
May St. George be a present help to the 
English. This soldier happened to know 
Latin and other useless things, and now, 
as he fired at his man in the grey advanc- 
ing mass — three hundred yards away — 
he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. 
He went on firing to the end, and at last 
Bill on his right had to clout him cheer- 
fully over the head to make him stop, 
pointing out as he did so that the King's 
ammunition cost money and was not 
lightly to be wasted in drilling funny 
patterns into dead Germans. 

For as the Latin scholar uttered his 
invocation he felt something between 



28 The Angels of Mons 

a shudder and an electric shock pass 
through his body. The roar of the battle 
died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; 
instead of it, he says, he heard a great 
voice and a shout louder than a thunder- 
peal crying, ''Array, array, array!" 

His heart grew hot as a burning coal, 
it grew cold as ice within him, as it seemed 
to him that a tumult of voices answered 
to his summons. He heard, or seemed to 
hear, thousands shouting: ''St. George! 
St. George!" 

"Ha! messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant 
us good deliverance!" 

"St. George for merry England!" 

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. 
George, succour us. " 

"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! 
a long bow and a strong bow. " 

"Heaven's Knight, aid us!" 

And as the soldier heard these voices 
he saw before him, beyond the trench, a 



The Bowmen 29 

long line of shapes, with a shining about 
them. They were like men who drew 
the bow, and with another shout, their 
cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling 
through the air towards the German 
hosts. 



The other men in the trench were firing 
all the while. They had no hope; but 
they aimed just as if they had been shoot- 
ing at Bisley. 

Suddenly one of them lifted up his 
voice in the plainest English. 

"Gawd help us!" he bellowed to the 
man next to him, "but we're blooming 
marvels! Look at those grey . . . 
gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see 
them? They're not going down in 
dozens nor in 'undreds; it's thousands, 
it is. Look! look! there's a regiment 
gone while I'm talking to ye. " 



30 The Angels of Mons 

''Shut it!" the other soldier bellowed, 
taking aim, ''what are ye gassing about? " 

But he gulped with astonishment even 
as he spoke, for, indeed, the grey men 
were falling by the thousands. The 
English could hear the guttural scream 
of the German officers, the crackle of their 
revolvers as they shot the reluctant; 
and still line after line crashed to the 
earth. 



All the while the Latin-bred soldier 
heard the cry: 

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur, dear 
saint, quick to our aid! St. George help 
us!" 

"High Chevalier, defend us!" 

The singing arrows fled so swift and 
thick that they darkened the air; the 
heathen horde melted from before them. 



The Bowmen 31 

'*More machine guns!" Bill yelled to 
Tom. 

''Don't hear them," Tom yelled back. 
''But, thank God, anyway; they've got 
it in the neck." 

In fact, there were ten thousand dead 
German soldiers left before that salient 
of the English army, and consequently 
there was no Sedan. In Germany, a 
country ruled by scientific principles, the 
Great General Staff decided that the 
contemptible English must have em- 
ployed shells containing an unknown gas 
of a poisonous nature, as no wounds 
were discernible on the bodies of the dead 
German soldiers. But the man who knew 
what nuts tasted like when they called 
themselves steak knew also that St. 
George had brought his Agincourt Bow- 
men to help the English. 



THE SOLDIERS' REST 

nPHE soldier with the ugly wound in 
the head opened his eyes at last, 
and looked about him with an air of 
pleasant satisfaction. 

He still felt drowsy and dazed with 
some fierce experience through which he 
had passed, but so far he could not recol- 
lect much about it. But an agreeable 
glow began to steal about his heart — such 
a glow as comes to people who have been 
in a tight place and have come through it 
better than they had expected. In its 
mildest form this set of emotions may be 
observed in passengers who have crossed 
the Channel on a windy day without being 
sick. They triumph a little internally, and 
are suffused with vague, kindly feelings. 

32 



The Soldiers' Rest 33 

The wounded soldier was somewhat of 
this disposition as he opened his eyes, 
pulled himself together, and looked about 
him. He felt a sense of delicious ease 
and repose in bones that had been racked 
and weary, and deep in the heart that had 
so lately been tormented there was an 
assurance of comfort — of the battle won. 
The thundering, roaring waves were 
passed; he had entered into the haven of 
calm waters. After fatigues and terrors 
that as yet he could not recollect he 
seemed now to be resting in the easiest of 
all easy chairs in a dim, low room. 

In the hearth there was a glint of fire 
and a blue, sweet-scented puff of wood 
smoke; a great black oak beam roughly 
hewn crossed the ceiling. Through the 
leaded panes of the windows he saw a 
rich glow of sunlight, green lawns, and 
against the deepest and most radiant of 
all blue skies the wonderful far-lifted 



34 The Angels of Mons 

towers of a vast Gothic cathedral — mys- 
tic, rich with imagery. 

'' Good Lord ! " he murmured to himself. 
^'I didn't know they had such places in 
France. It's just like Wells. And it 
might be the other day when I was going 
past the Swan, just as it might be past 
that window, and asked the ostler what 
time it was, and he says, 'What time? 
Why, summer-time'; and there outside 
it looks like summer that would last for 
ever. If this was an inn they ought to 
call it 'The Soldiers' Rest.'" 

He dozed off again, and when he opened 
his eyes once more a kindly looking man 
in some sort of black robe was standing 
by him. 

^'It's all right now, isn't it?" he said, 
speaking in good English. 

"Yes, thank you, sir, as right as can 
be. I hope to be back again soon." 

"Well, well; but how did you come 



The Soldiers' Rest 35 

here? Where did you get that?'* He 
pointed to the wound on the soldier's 
forehead. 

The soldier put his hand up to his brow 
and looked dazed and puzzled. 

''Well, sir," he said at last, **it was 
like this, to begin at the beginning. You 
know how we came over in August, and 
there we were in the thick of it, as you 
might say, in a day or two. An awful 
time it was, and I don't know how I got 
through it alive. My best friend was 
killed dead beside me as we lay in the 
trenches. By Cambrai, I think it was. 

''Then things got a little quieter for a 
bit, and I was quartered in a village for 
the best part of a week. She was a very 
nice lady where I was, and she treated 
me proper with the best of everything. 
Her husband he was fighting; but she 
had the nicest little boy I ever knew, a 
little fellow of five, or six it might be, 



36 The Angels of Mons 

and we got on splendid. The amount of 
their lingo that kid taught me — ' We, we ' 
and 'Bong swor' and 'Commong voo 
porty voo,' and all — and I taught him 
English. You should have heard that 
nipper say "Arf a mo', old un'! It was 
a treat. 

^^Then one day we got surprised. 
There was about a dozen of us in the vil- 
lage, and two or three hundred Germans 
came down on us early one morning. 
They got us; no help for it. Before we 
could shoot. 



"Well, there we were. They tied our 
hands behind our backs, and smacked our 
faces and kicked us a bit, and we were 
lined up opposite the house where I'd 
been staying. 

''And then that poor little chap broke 
away from his mother, and he run out 



The Soldiers^ Rest 37 

and saw one of the Boshes, as we call 
them, fetch me one over the jaw with his 
clenched fist. Oh dear! oh dear! he 
might have done it a dozen times if only 
that Httle child hadn't seen him. 

''He had a poor bit of a toy I'd bought 
him at the village shop; a toy gun it was. 
And out he came running, as I say, crying 
out something in French like 'Bad man! 
bad man! don't hurt my AngHsh or I 
shoot you'; and he pointed that gun at 
the German soldier. The German, he 
took his bayonet, and he drove it right 
through the poor little chap's throat." 

The soldier's face worked and twitched 
and twisted itself into a sort of grin, and 
he sat grinding his teeth and staring at 
the man in the black robe. He was silent 
for a little. And then he found his voice, 
and the oaths rolled terrible, thundering 
from him, as he cursed that murderous 
wretch, and bade him go down and burn 



38 The Angels of Mons 

for ever in hell. And the tears were 
raining down his face, and they choked 
him at last. 

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," 
he said, ''especially you being a minister 
of some kind, I suppose; but I can't help 
it. He was such a dear little man. " 

The man in black murmured something 
to himself: ^^ Pretiosa in conspectu Dom- 
ini mors innocenti'iim ejus'' — Dear in the 
sight of the Lord is the death of His 
innocents. Then he put a kind hand very 
gently on the soldier's shoulder. 

''Never mind," said he; "I've seen 
some service in my time, myself. But 
what about that wound?" 

"Oh, that; that's nothing. But I'll 
tell you how I got it. It was just like 
this. The Germans had us fair, as I teU 
you, and they shut us up in a barn in the 
village; just flung us on the ground and 
left us to starve seemingly. They barred 



The Soldiers' Rest 39 

up the big door of the barn, and put a sen- 
try there, and thought we were all right. 

** There were sort of slits like very nar- 
row windows in one of the walls, and on 
the second day it was, I was looking out of 
these slits down the street, and I could see 
those German devils were up to mischief. 
They were planting their machine guns 
everywhere handy where an ordinary man 
coming up the street would never see 
them, but I see them, and I see the infantry 
lining up behind the garden walls. Then 
I had a sort of a notion of what was com- 
ing; and presently, sure enough, I could 
hear some of our chaps singing 'Hullo, 
hullo, hullo!' in the distance; and I says 
to myself, 'Not this time.' 

"So I looked about me, and I found a 
hole under the wall; a kind of a drain I 
should think it was, and I found I could 
just squeeze through. And I got out and 
crept round, and away I goes running 



40 The Angels of Mons 

down the street, yelling for all I was worth, 
just as our chaps were getting round the 
corner at the bottom. 'Bang, bang!' 
went the guns, behind me and in front of 
me, and on each side of me, and then — 
bash! something hit me on the head and 
over I went; and I don't remember any- 
thing more till I woke up here just now. " 

The soldier lay back in his chair and 
closed his eyes for a moment. When he 
opened them he saw that there were other 
people in the room besides the minister 
in the black robes. One was a man in a 
big black cloak. He had a grim old face 
and a great beaky nose. He shook the 
soldier by the hand. 

*'By God! sir," he said, ''you're a 
credit to the British Army; you're a 
damned fine soldier and a good man, and, 
by God! I'm proud to shake hands with 
you." 

And then someone came out of the 



The Soldiers' Rest 41 

shadow, someone in queer clothes such as 
the soldier had seen worn by the heralds 
when he had been on duty at the opening 
of Parliament by the King. 

''Now, by Corpus Domini,** this man 
said, ''of all knights ye be noblest and 
gentlest, and ye be of fairest report, and 
now ye be a brother of the noblest 
brotherhood that ever was since this 
world's beginning, since ye have yielded 
dear life for your friends' sake. " 

The soldier did not understand what 
the man was saying to him. There were 
others, too, in strange dresses, who came 
and spoke to him. Some spoke in what 
sounded like French. He could not make 
it out; but he knew that they all spoke 
kindly and praised him. 

"What does it all mean?" he said to 
the minister. "What are they talking 
about? They don't think I'd let down 
my pals?" 



42 The Angels of Mons 

'* Drink this, " said the minister, and he 
handed the soldier a great silver cup, 
brimming with wine. 

The soldier took a deep draught, and 
in that moment all his sorrows passed 
from him. 

"What is it?'^ he asked? 

"Vin nouveau du Royaume, " said the 
minister. "New Wine of the King- 
dom, you call it." And then he bent 
down and murmured in the soldier's 
ear. 

"What," said the wounded man, "the 
place they used to tell us about in Sun- 
day School? With such drink and such 
joy " 

His voice was hushed. For as he 
looked at the minister the fashion of his 
vesture was changed. The black robe 
seemed to melt away from him. He 
was all in armour, if armour be made of 
starlight, of the rose of dawn, and of 



The Soldiers' Rest 43 

sunset fires; and he lifted up a great 
sword of flame. 

Full in the midst, his Cross of Red 
Triumphant Michael brandished, 

And trampled the Apostate's pride. 



THE MONSTRANCE 

Then it jell out in the sacring of the Mass 
that right as the priest heaved up the Host 
there came a beam redder than any rose and 
smote upon it, and then it was changed 
bodily into the shape and fashio7i of a Child 
having his arms stretched forth, as he had 
been nailed tipon the Tree. — Old Romance. 

QO far things were going very well 
indeed. The night was thick and 
black and cloudy, and the German force 
had come three-quarters of their way or 
more without an alarm. There was no 
challenge from the English lines; and 
indeed the English were being kept busy 
by a high shell-fire on their front. This 
had been the German plan; and it was 

44 



The Monstrance 45 

coming off admirably. Nobody thought 
that there was any danger on the left; 
and so the Prussians, writhing on their 
stomachs over the ploughed field, were 
drawing nearer and nearer to the wood. 
Once there they could establish them- 
selves comfortably and securely during 
what remained of the night ; and at dawn 
the English left would be hopelessly 
enfiladed — and there would be another of 
those movements which people who really 
understand military matters call "read- 
justments of our line.'' 

The noise made by the men creeping 
and crawling over the fields was drowned 
by the cannonade, from the English side 
as well as the German. On the English 
centre and right things were indeed very 
brisk; the big guns were thundering and 
shrieking and roaring, the machine guns 
were keeping up the very devil's racket; 
the flares and illuminating shells were as 



46 The Angels of Mons 

good as the Crystal Palace in the old 
days, as the soldiers said to one another. 
All this had been thought of and thought 
out on the other side. The German 
force was beautifully organized. The 
men who crept nearer and nearer to the 
wood carried quite a number of machine 
guns in bits on their backs ; others of them 
had small bags full of sand; yet others 
big bags that were empty. When the 
wood was reached the sand from the small 
bags was to be emptied into the big bags ; 
the machine-gun parts were to be put 
together, the guns mounted behind the 
sandbag redoubt, and then, as Major 
Von und Zu pleasantly observed, ''the 
English pigs shall to gehenna-fire quickly 
come. ** 

The major was so well pleased with the 
way things had gone that he permitted 
himself a very low and guttural chuckle; 
in another ten minutes success would be 



The Monstrance 47 

assured. He half turned his head round 
to whisper a caution about some detail 
of the sandbag business to the big ser- 
geant-major, Karl Heinz, who was crawl- 
ing just behind him. At that instant 
Karl Heinz leapt into the air with a 
scream that rent through the night and 
through all the roaring of the artillery. 
He cried in a terrible voice, ''The Glory 
of the Lord!" and plunged and pitched 
forward, stone dead. They said that his 
face as he stood up there and cried aloud 
was as if it had been seen through a sheet 
of flame. 

"They" were one or two out of the few 
who got back to the German lines. Most 
of the Prussians stayed in the ploughed 
field. Karl Heinz's scream had frozen 
the blood of the English soldiers, but it 
had also ruined the major's plans. He 
and his men, caught all unready, clumsy 
with the burdens that they carried, were 



48 The Angels of Mons 

shot to pieces; hardly a score of them re- 
turned. The rest of the force were at- 
tended to by an English burying party. 
According to custom the dead men were 
searched before they were buried, and 
some singular relics of the campaign were 
found upon them, but nothing so singular 
as Karl Heinz 's diary. 

He had been keeping it for some time. 
It began with entries about bread and 
sausage and the ordinary incidents of the 
trenches ; here and there Karl wrote about 
an old grandfather, and a big china pipe, 
and pine woods and roast goose. Then 
the diarist seemed to get fidgety about his 
health. Thus : 

April 17. — ^Annoyed for some days 
by murmuring sounds in my head. 
I trust I shall not become deaf, like 
my departed uncle Christopher. 

April 20. — The noise in my head 



The Monstrance 49 

grows worse; it is a humming sound. 
It distracts me; twice I have failed 
to hear the captain and have been 
reprimanded. 

April 22. — So bad is my head 
that I go to see the doctor. He 
speaks of tinnitus, and gives me an 
inhaling apparatus that shall reach, 
he says, the middle ear. 

April 25. — The apparatus is of 
no use. The sound is now become 
like the booming of a great church 
bell. It reminds me of the bell at 
St. Lambart on that terrible day of 
last August. 

April 26. — I could swear that it is 
the bell of St. Lambart that I hear 
all the time. They rang it as the 
procession came out of the church. 

The man's writing, at first firm enough, 
begins to straggle unevenly over the page 



50 The Angels of Mons 

at this point. The entries show that he 
became convinced that he heard the bell 
of St. Lambart's Church ringing, though 
(as he knew better than most men) there 
had been no bell and no church at St. 
Lambart's since the summer of 1914. 
There was no village either — the whole 
place was a rubbish-heap. 

Then the unfortunate Karl Heinz was 
beset with other troubles. 

May 2. — I fear I am becoming ill. 
Today Joseph Kleist, who is next to 
me in the trench, asked me why I 
jerked my head to the right so con- 
stantly. I told him to hold his 
tongue ; but this shows that I am no- 
ticed. I keep fancying that there is 
something white just beyond the 
range of my sight on the right hand. 

May 3. — This whiteness is now 
quite clear, and in front of me. All 



The Monstrance 51 

this day it has slowly passed before 
me. I asked Joseph Kleist if he saw 
a piece of newspaper just beyond the 
trench. He stared at me solemnly — 
he is a stupid fool — and said, "There 
is no paper." 

May 4. — It looks like a white 
robe. There was a strong smell of 
incense today in the trench. No 
one seemed to notice it. There is 
decidedly a white robe, and I think 
I can see feet, passing very slowly 
before me at this moment while I 
write. 

There is no space here for continuous 
extracts from Karl Heinz's diary. But 
to condense with severity, it would seem 
that he slowly gathered about himself a 
complete set of sensory hallucinations. 
First the auditory hallucination of the 
sound of a bell, which the doctor called 



52 The Angels of Mons 

tinnitus. Then a patch of white growing 
into a white robe, then the smell of incense. 
At last he lived in two worlds. He saw 
his trench, and the level before it, and the 
English lines ; he talked with his comrades 
and obeyed orders, though with a certain 
difficulty; but he also heard the deep 
boom of St. Lambart's bell, and saw con- 
tinually advancing towards him a white 
procession of little children, led by a boy 
who was swinging a censer. There is 
one extraordinary entry: "But in August 
those children carried no lilies; now they 
have lilies in their hands. Why should 
they have lilies?" 

It is interesting to note the transition 
over the border line. After May 26. there 
is no reference in the diary to bodily 
illness, with two notable exceptions. Up 
to and including that date the sergeant 
knows that he is suffering from illusions ; 
after that he accepts his hallucinations 



The Monstrance 53 

as actualities. The man who cannot see 
what he sees and hear what he hears is a 
fool. So he writes: "I ask who is singing 
Ave Maria Stella. That blockhead Fried- 
rich Schumacher raises his crest and 
answers insolently that no one sings, 
since singing is strictly forbidden for the 
present." 

A few days before the disastrous night 
expedition the last figure in the procession 
appeared to those sick eyes. 

The old priest now comes in his 
golden robe, the two boys holding 
each side of it. He is looking just 
as he did when he died, save that 
when he walked in St. Lambart 
there was no shining round his head. 
But this is illusion and contrary to 
reason, since no one has a shining 
about his head. I must take some 
medicine. 



54 The An^^els of Mons 



Note here that Karl Heinz absolutely 
accepts the appearance of the martyred 
priest of St. Lambart as actual, while he 
thinks that the halo must be an illusion; 
and so he reverts again to his physical 
condition. 

The priest held up both his hands, the 
diary states, ''as if there were something 
between them. But there is a sort of 
cloud or dimness over this object, what- 
ever it may be. M}^ poor Aunt Kathie 
suffered much from her eyes in her old 
age. " 



One can guess what the priest of St. 
Lambart carried in his hands when he and 
the little children went out into the hot 
sunlight to implore mercy, while the great 
resounding bell of St. Lambart boomed 
over the plain. Karl Heinz knew what 
happened then; they said that it was he 



The Monstrance 55 

who killed the old priest and helped to 
crucify the little child against the church 
door. The baby was only three years old. 
He died calling piteously for "mummy'* 
and "daddy." 



And those who will may guess what 
Karl Heinz saw when the mist cleared 
from before the monstrance in the priest's 
hands. Then he shrieked and died. 



THE DAZZLING LIGHT 

The new head-covering is made of heavy 
steely which has been specially treated to 
increase its resisting power. The walls 
protecting the skull are particularly thick ^ 
and the weight of the helmet renders its use 
in open warfare out of the question. The 
rim is large^ like that of the headpiece of 
MambrinOj and the soldier can at will either 
bring the helmet forward and protect his 
eyes or wear it so as to protect the base of the 
skull. . . . Military experts admit that 
a continuance of the present trench warfare 
may lead to those engaged in it, especially 
bombing parties and barbed wire cutters, 
being more heavily armoured than the 
knights who fought at Bouvines and at 
Agincourt. — The Times, July 22, 1915. 

56 



The Dazzling Light 57 

TTHE war is already a fruitful mother 
of legends. Some people think that 
there are too many war legends, and a 
Croydon gentleman — or lady, I am not 
sure which — wrote to me quite recently 
telling me that a certain particular legend, 
which I will not specify, had become the 
*' chief horror of the war.'* There may 
be something to be said for this point of 
view, but it strikes me as interesting that 
the old myth-making faculty has survived 
into these days, a relic of noble, far-off 
Homeric battles. And after all, what do 
we know? It does not do to be too sure 
that this, that, or the other hasn't hap- 
pened and couldn't have happened. 

What follows, at any rate, has no claim 
to be considered either as legend or as 
myth. It is merely one of the odd cir- 
cumstances of these times, and I have no 
doubt it can easily be '* explained away." 
In fact, the rationalistic explanation of 



58 The Angels of Mons 

the whole thing is patent and on the 
surface. There is only one little diffi- 
culty, and that, I fancy, is by no means 
insuperable. In any case this one knot 
or tangle may be put down as a queer 
coincidence and nothing more. 

Here, then, is the curiosity or oddity in 
question. A young fellow, whom we will 
call for avoidance of all identification 
Delamere Smith — he is now Lieutenant 
Delamere Smith — was spending his holi- 
days on the coast of west South Wales 
at the beginning of the war. He was 
something or other not very important in 
the City, and in his leisure hours he 
smattered lightly and agreeably a little 
literature, a little art, a little antiquarian- 
ism. He liked the Italian primitives, 
he knew the difference between first, 
second, and third pointed, he had looked 
through Boutell's ''Engraved Brasses.'* 
He had been heard indeed to speak 



The Dazzling Light 59 

with enthusiasm of the brasses of Sir 
Robert de Septvans and Sir Roger de 
Trumpington. 

One morning — he thinks it must have 
been the morning of August i6, 19 14 — 
the sun shone so brightly into his room 
that he woke early, and the fancy took 
him that it would be fine to sit on the 
cliffs in the pure sunHght. So he dressed 
and went out, and climbed up Giltar 
Point, and sat there enjoying the sweet 
air and the radiance of the sea, and the 
sight of the fringe of creaming foam about 
the grey foundations of St. Margaret's 
Island. Then he looked beyond and 
gazed at the new white monastery on 
Caldy, and wondered who the architect 
was, and how he had contrived to make 
the group of buildings look exactly like 
the background of a mediaeval picture. 

After about an hour of this and a couple 
of pipes. Smith confesses that he began 



6o The Angels of Mons 

to feel extremely drowsy. He was just 
wondering whether it would not be pleas- 
ant to stretch himself out on the wild 
thyme that scented the high place and go 
to sleep till breakfast, when the mounting 
sun caught one of the monastery windows, 
and Smith stared sleepily at the darting 
flashing light till it dazzled him. Then 
he felt ''queer." There was an odd sen- 
sation as if the top of his head were dilat- 
ing and contracting, and then he says he 
had a sort of shock, something between 
a mild current of electricity and the sensa- 
tion of putting one's hand into the ripple 
of a swift brook. 

Now, what happened next Smith can- 
not describe at all clearly. He knew he 
was on Giltar, looking across the waves to 
Caldy; he heard all the while the hollow, 
booming tide in the caverns of the rocks 
far below him. And yet he saw, as if in 
a glass, a very different country — a level 



The Dazzling Light 6i 

fenland cut by slow streams, by long 
avenues of trimmed trees. 

"It looked, " he says, "as if it ought to 
have been a lonely country, but it was 
swarming with men; they were thick as 
ants in an anthill. And they were all 
dressed in armour; that was the strange 
thing about it. 

"I thought I was standing by what 
looked as if it had been a farmhouse; 
but it was all battered to bits, just a heap 
of ruins and rubbish. All that was left 
was one tall round chimney, shaped very 
much like the fifteenth-century chimneys 
in Pembrokeshire. And thousands and 
tens of thousands went marching by. 

"They were all in armour, and in all 
sorts of armour. Some of them had over- 
lapping tongues of bright metal fastened 
on their clothes, others were in chain mail 
from head to foot, others were in heavy 
plate armour. 



62 The Angels of Mons 

"They wore helmets of all shapes and 
sorts and sizes. One regiment had steel 
caps with wide brims, something like the 
old barbers* basins. Another lot had 
knights' tilting helmets on, closed up so 
that you couldn't see their faces. Most 
of them wore metal gauntlets, either of 
steel rings or plates, and they had steel 
over their boots. A great many had 
things like battle-maces swinging by their 
sides, and all these fellows carried a sort 
of string of big metal balls round their 
waist. Then a dozen regiments went by, 
every man with a steel shield slung over 
his shoulder. The last to go by were 
cross-bowmen." 

In fact, it appeared to Delamere Smith 
that he watched the passing of a host of 
men in mediaeval armour before him, and 
yet he knew — by the position of the sun 
and of a rosy cloud that was passing over 
the Worm's Head — that this vision, or 



The Dazzling Light 63 

whatever it was, lasted only a second or 
two. Then that slight sense of shock re- 
turned, and Smith returned to the con- 
templation of the physical phenomena of 
the Pembrokeshire coast — blue waves, 
grey St. Margaret's, and Caldy Abbey 
white in the sunlight. 

It will be said, no doubt, and very 
likely with truth, that Smith fell asleep 
on Giltar, and mingled in a dream the 
thought of the great war just begun with 
his smatterings of mediaeval battle and 
arms and armour. The explanation seems 
tolerable enough. 

But there is the one little difficulty. 
It has been said that Smith is now Lieu- 
tenant Smith. He got his commission last 
autumn, and went out in May. He hap- 
pens to speak French rather well, and so 
he has become what is called, I believe, an 
officer of liaison, or some such term. Any- 
how, he is often behind the French lines. 



64 The Angels of Mons 

He was home on short leave last week, 
and said: 

"Ten days ago I was ordered to . 

I got there early in the morning, and had 
to wait a bit before I could see the General. 
I looked about me, and there on the left 
of us was a farm shelled into a heap of 
ruins, with one round chimney standing, 
shaped like the 'Flemish' chimneys in 
Pembrokeshire. And then the men in 
armour marched by, just as I had seen 
them — French regiments. The things like 
battle-maces were bomb-throwers, and 
the metal balls round the men's waists 
were the bombs. They told me that the 
cross-bows were used for bomb-shooting. 

"The march I saw was part of a big 
movement; you will hear more of it 
before long." 



THE BOWMEN AND 
OTHER NOBLE GHOSTS 



BY "the LONDONER" 



nPHERE was a journalist — and the 
Evening News reader well knows 
the initials of his name — who lately sat 
down to write a story. 



Of course his story had to be about the 

war; there are no other stories nowadays. 

And so he wrote of English soldiers who, 

in the dusk on a field of France, faced the 

sullen mass of the on-coming Huns. 

They were few against fearful odds, but, 

as they sent the breech-bolt home and 

aimed and fired, they became aware that 
s 65 



66 The Angels of Mons 

others fought beside them. Down the 
air came cries to St. George and twanging 
of the bow-string; the old bowmen of 
England had risen at England's need 
from their graves in that French earth 
and were fighting for England. 

• • • • • 

He said that he made up that story by 
himself, that he sat down and wrote it 
out of his head. But others knew better. 
It must really have happened. There 
was, I remember, a clergyman of good 
credit who told him that he was clean 
mistaken ; the archers had really and truly 
risen up to fight for England : the tale was 
all up and down the front. 

• • • • • 

For my part I had thought that he wrote 
out of his head; I had seen him at the 
detestable job of doing it. I myself have 
hated this business of writing ever since 



Bowmen and Other Ghosts 67 

I found out that it was not so easy as it 
looks, and I can always spare a little 
sympathy for a man who is driving a pen 
to the task of putting words in their right 
places. Yet the clergyman persuaded me 
at last. Who am I that I should doubt 
the faith of a clerk in holy orders? It 
must have happened. Those archers 
fought for us, and the grey-goose feather 
has flown once again in English battle. 



Since that day I look eagerly for the 
ghosts who must be taking their share in 
this world-war. Never since the world 
began was such a war as this: surely 
Marlborough and the Duke, Talbot and 
Harry of Monmouth, and many another 
shadowy captain must be riding among 
our horsemen. The old gods of war are 
wakened by this loud clamour of the guns. 



68 The Angels of Mons 

All the lands are astir. It is not enough 
that Asia should be humming like an 
angry hive and the far islands in arms, 
Australia sending her young men and 
Canada making herself a camp. When 
we talk over the war news we call up 
ancient names: we debate how Rome 
stands and what is the matter with 
Greece. 



As for Greece, I have ceased to talk of 
her. If I wanted to say anything about 
Greece I should get down the Poetry 
Book and quote Lord Byron's fine old 
ranting verse. ''The mountains look 
on Marathon — and Marathon looks on 
the sea." But ''standing on the Per- 
sians' grave" Greece seems in the same 
humour that made Lord Byron give her 
up as a hopelessly flabby country. 



Bowmen and Other Ghosts 69 

" 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more" 
is as true as ever it was. That last 
telegram of the Kaiser must have done its 
soothing work. You remember how it 
ran : the Kaiser was too busy to make up 
new phrases. He telegraphed to his 
sister the familiar Potsdam sentence: 
"Woe to those who dare to draw the 
sword against me." I am sure that I 
have heard that before. And he added — 
delightful and significant postscript ! — 
"My compliments to Tino. " 



And Tino — King Constantine of the 
Hellenes — understood. He is in bed now 
with a ver}^ bad cold, and like to stay in 
bed until the weather be more settled. 
But before going to bed he was able to tell 
a journalist that Greece was going quietly 
on with her proper business; it was her 
mission to carry civilization to the world. 



70 The Angels of Mons 

Truly that was the mission of ancient 
Greece. What we get from Tino's mod- 
ern Greece is not civilization but the little 
black currants for plum-cake. 



But Rome. Greece may be dead or in 
the currant trade. Rome is alive and 
immortal. Do not talk to me about 
Signor Giolitti, who is quite sure that the 
only things that matter in this new Italy, 
which is old Rome, are her commercial 
relations with Germany. Rome of the 
legions, our ancient mistress and con- 
queror, is alive today, and she cannot be 
for an ignoble peace. Here in my news- 
paper is the speech of a poet spoken in 
Rome to a shouting crowd : I will cut out 
the column and put it in the Poetry Book. 

• • • k • 

He calls to the living and to the dead: 
"I saw the fire of Vesta, O Romans, lit 



Bowmen and Other Ghosts 71 

yesterday in the great steel works of 
Liguria. The fountain of Juturna, O 
Romans, I saw its water run to temper 
armour, to chill the drills that hollow out 
the bore of guns. " This is poetry of the 
old Roman sort. I imagine that scene 
in Rome : the latest poet of Rome calling 
upon the Romans in the name of Vesta's 
holy fire, in the name of the springs at 
which the Great Twin Brethren washed 
their horses. I still believe in the power 
and the ancient charm of noble words. I 
do not think that Giolitti and the stock- 
brokers will keep old Rome off the old 
roads where the legions went. 



POSTSCRIPT 

TI/'HILE this volume was passmg through 

the press, Mr. Ralph Shirley, the 

editor of The Occult Review called my 

attention to an article that is appearing in 

the August issue of his magazine, and was 

kind enough to let me see the advance proof 

sheets. 

The article is called '^The Angelic 

Leaders. *' It is written by Miss Phyllis 

Campbell. I have read it with great care. 

Miss Campbell says that she was in 

France when the war broke out. She 

became a nurse, and while she was nursing 

the wounded she was informed that an 

English soldier wanted a ^^holy picture.'^ 

She went to the man and found him to 

be a Lancashire Fusilier. He said that he 

72 



Postscript 73 

was a Wesley an Methodist, and asked ''for 
a picture or medal {he didn't care which) 
of St. George . . . because he had seen 
him on a white horse, leading the British 
at Vitry-le-FrangoiSy when the Allies 
turned y 

This statement was corroborated by a 
wounded R.F.A. man who was present. 
He saw a tall man with yellow hair, in 
golden armour, on a white horse, holding 
his sword up, and his mouth open as if he 
was saying, ''Come on, boys! Fll put 
the kybosh on the devils.'' This figure 
was bareheaded — as appeared later from 
the testimony of other soldiers — and the 
R.F.A. man and the Fusilier knew that he 
was St. George, because he was exactly like 
the figure of St. George on the sovereigns. 
"Hadn't they seen him with his sword on 
every 'quid' they'd ever had?" 

From further evidence it seemed that 
while the English had seen the apparition 



74 The Angels of Mons 

of St, George coming out of a ^^ yellow 
mist'' or ** cloud of light/' to the French 
had been vouchsafed visions of St. Michael 
the Archangel and Joan of Arc, Miss 
Campbell says: 

''Everybody has seen them who has 
fought through from Mons to Ypres; 
they all agree on them individually, and 
have no doubt at all as to the final issue 
of their interference, " 

Such are the main points of the article 
as it concerns the great legend of ''The 
Angels of Mons." I cannot say that the 
author has shaken my incredulity — firstly, 
because the evidence is second-hand. Miss 
Campbell is perhaps acquainted with 
^'Pickwick," and I would \ miind her of 
that famous {and golden) ruling of Stare- 
high, J. : to the effect that you mustn't tell 
us what the soldier said; it's not evidence. 
Miss Campbell has offe^ided against this 



Postscript 75 

rule J and she has not only told us what the 
soldier said, hut she has omitted to give us 
the soldier s name and address. 

If Miss Campbell proffered herself as a 
witness at the Old Bailey and said, ' ' John 
Doe is undoubtedly guilty. A soldier I 
met told me that he had seen the prisoner 
put his hand into an old gentleman's poc- 
ket and take out a purse'' — well, she would 
find that the stout spirit of Mr. Justice 
Stareleigh still survives in our judges. 

The soldier must he produced. Before 
that is done we are not technically aware 
that he exists at all. 

Then there are one or two points in the 
article itself which puzzle me. The Fusilier 
and the R.F.A. man had seen St. George 
^^ leading the British at Vitry-le-Frangois^ 
when the Allies turned.'" Thus the time 
of the apparition and the place of the appari- 
tion were firmly fixed in the two soldiers'* 
minds. 



76 The Angels of Mons 

Yet the very next paragraph in the 
article begins: 

'''Where was this?' I asked. But 
neither of them could tell. '* 

This is an odd circumstance. They 
knew, and yet they did not know; or, rather, 
they had forgotten a piece of information 
that they had themselves imparted a few 
seconds before. 

Another point. The soldiers knew that 
the figure on the horse was St. George by his 
exact likeness to the figure of the saint on 
the English sovereign. 

This, again, is odd. The apparition 
was of a bareheaded figure in golden armour. 
The St. George of the coinage is naked, 
except for a short cape fiying from the 
shoulders, and a helmet. He is not bare- 
headed, and has no armour — save the piece 
on his head. I do not quite see how the 



Postscript 77 

soldiers were so certain as to the identity of 
the apparition. 

Lastly, Miss Campbell declares that 
^^ everybody'' who fought from Mons to 
Ypres saw the apparitions. If that be sOy 
it is again odd that Nobody has come for- 
ward to testify at first hand to the most 
amazing event of his life. Many men have 
been back on leave from the front, we have 
many wounded in hospital, many soldiers 
have written letters home. And they have 
all combined, this great host, to keep silence 
as to the most wonderful of occurrences, the 
most inspiring assurance, the surest omen 
of victory. 

It may be so, but 

Arthur Machen. 




« ..mce 

Ilorencc If. (E>arclau 

Author of 

12°. 75 cents net 

A little story of the Red Cross flag in Belgium, 
founded on a supremely pathetic and supremely 
heroic occurrence during the masterful retreat 
from Mons. 

" It is true in its main details," writes Mrs. 
Barclay, "given as it reached me, in the sub- 
lime simplicity of a soldier*s letter from the 
front." 

This inspiring little tale has been most at- 
tractively clothed in deep purple cloth with 
decorative gold stamping, and each page of the 
text is surrounded by a floral decoration in 
color and gold. A gift book that will remain in 
the heart. 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



By the Author of *' The Rosary " 

My Heart's Right 
There 

By 

Florence L. Barclay 

Author of "The Wall of Partition," "The Broken Halo," 
" The Following of the Star," etc 

12\ 75 cts. 

A tender, patriotic little story of the 
war, and the cottage homes of Eng- 
land, and the wives who are left be- 
hind. A glimpse is given of what a 
woman undergoes while the husband 
is in the field, and of her subordina- 
tion, though not without many a tug 
at the heartstrings, of self to country. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



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